In the light of my last blog on the importance of detail…

I want to put down here an article I came across by Prasenjit Basu, eminent historian and economist. 

I was troubled by the villification in some quarters of the Queen and realized that what was being said and written had a lot of gaps and falsification. I scoured the net to see where I could get clarity, and found it in this piece:

QE I was a feisty queen of a small island nation (with 1/30th the population of the world’s largest economy at the time, India’s) but gave the royal charter to establish the English East India Company in 1600. England had defected from the mainstream of Christendom during her father’s (Henry VIII’s) reign. The charter for the EICo marked the start of England’s (and Britain’s) global ambitions. 

QEII, on the other hand, was a gentle monarch who presided over the empire’s dissolution. The jewel in her father’s crown, had already gone by the time she ascended the throne, although her uncle Dickie Mountbatten had ensured that Nehru and Gandhi agreed to keep India a dominion—betraying the Congress’s pledge (since 26 January 1930) to accept nothing but Purna Swaraj. The British had no interest in giving India even dominion status at the end of WWII, as was clear in a white paper produced for the British government in May 1945 by the British army Chiefs of Staff. This spoke of steps needed to keep iron control over India and the Indian Ocean area for the next 15 years (until 1960!) regardless of any “constitutional changes” in British India. At Simla in 1945, the British basically offered the Cripps plan rejected rightly by Gandhi in 1942—partial self-rule by Indians, albeit in a Balkanised nation, still supervised by a British viceroy and provincial governors in accordance with the GoI act of 1935, with slight modifications to its federal features. 

It was QEII who was to reign over the dissolution of the rest of her empire. After Suez in 1956 (when the absence of Indian soldiers showed that Britain was a paper tiger in the ‘Middle East’), Pakistan became a republic, Malaysia and Ghana became independent soon afterwards, Iraq threw out its British-puppet monarchy in 1958 and Singapore got self-rule in 1959. African colonies (Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria, Tanzania) and Kuwait declared independence in the 1960s, other Arab protectorates (UAE, Qatar, Bahrain) in 1971 (the year Sri Lanka became a republic), and Hong Kong was ‘returned’ in 1997 to China (although its Central island had been given to Britain in perpetuity in 1842). 

The two Elizabethan Ages thus bookended the start and end of the British Empire. 

(Our grouse and hatred is for what the East India Company did to our country and our people, and which British government added to and continued till our independence. The monarch was merely a figurehead with no real powers. And so, as a human being how she impacted on us (or not) is, I feel, important.)

The importance of…

being factually correct in the details of the topic we are writing about, as well as in how we express ourselves. It is easy to read a bit of an article or of any source of knowledge or information, and write on it filling in the blanks the mind throws up with our own expertise and play on words. If questioned, we are able to come up with answers and more words to hide behind, or we deluge the other person with so many words and ideas that the topic itself is lost. How much easier it would be to read, refer the dictionary or thesaurus, and learn more about what is exercising our mind, and then write about it or speak about it. We need to be honest to our intellect, honest to our source of knowledge and information, otherwise we run the danger of not being taken seriously and worse, not knowing anything about anything at all…

Queen Elizabeth…

Deeply saddened by Queen Elizabeth’s passing. We didn’t know her. Indeed she belonged to another universe but her influence was great. She was the one steadying factor through the years. The world experienced - and still continues to experience - the turmoils of war, illness, hatred, divisiveness, and what have you, but somehow this person sitting in faraway England remained a constant. She lived the values that were inculcated in her as she was groomed to rule. Regardless of the love-hate relationship Britain has with the countries of the world, this one lady held the imagination and respect of everyone. Her steady presence was the one sure factor in a world, totally fragmented and pulling in a thousand ways. She struggled too within her own family, in a differently evolving England, in a world rapidly changing for better and worse, and yet never lost her equilibrium on the world stage. 

One needs heroes, and for me, she was one. 

May her soul rest in peace.

A strange but…

very real phenomenon we have here in India is how we manage to ‘Indianize’ everything. No matter from which part of the world the influence is, if we like it, or if we find use in it, we take it in, Indianize it and make that version our very own….!!! For instance, English—-we speak it, but in our own way. We love western wear, but we Indianize it in our own unique distinctive way. In Education, the International Baccalaureate programme, and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education programme are deeply interesting and we want to incorporate them in our schools….so we do this, and then promptly go about Indianizing them….. And Music! Dance! The biggest changes ever have been made in these fields because of the western influence. And so, whether it is planning a buffet, or a getting ready for a plane journey, or choosing the decor for our home, no matter which area of our lives we look at, we set our criteria keeping western standards in mind. But…….they are all very, very, very Indian….. very desi….. and somehow we force the world to accept this…

Dani Blum…

has cleared a huge doubt in my mind. This morning The Telegraph, Calcutta, has an article, ‘Life as we know it’, and Dani Blum clears the confusion between ‘burnout’ and ‘depression’. While both show many similar symptoms, they are different and we would do well to understand this so that we can ask for the help we need. 

Burnout: while we usually connect this with the workplace, increasingly it is being found out by researchers that there is parental burnout, where caregivers feel exhausted all the time. There is also the burnout that’s been brought on by working out of home. After the initial feeling of comfort of working from home, and maybe even increased productivity, people are realizing that because they are working from home, they are tending to put in longer hours. Now, psychologists are warning of burnout happening because workers feel like they don’t have control over their day-to-day lives, often getting bogged down by a thousand little tasks. 

The symptoms of burnout are feelings of depletion, cynicism, resentment, irritability, and ineffectiveness. 

Healthcare workers, workers in the service sector, and those in retail industry, who suffer burnout start to lose empathy.

There are also physical symptoms to deal with—insomnia, headaches, and gastrointestinal issues. 

The World Health Organisation includes burnout in its diagnostic manual as an ‘occupational phenomenon’. 

Depression on the other hand is a clinical diagnosis. Activities, books, and movies, among other things, that a person enjoyed start to seem tedious, and downright hateful. 

While with burnout you don’t have energy for your hobbies, with depression they seem unpleasant and not fun anymore. 

While the initial symptoms of both may seem the same, a person can bounce back from burnout by taking a day off or with small changes in lifestyle, but depression causes people to think they are worthless and life is not worth living. 

We also need to start putting the ‘screen’ be it of the phone, ipad, computer, laptop, or tv, in its rightful place in our lives…give it the importance it needs, but not our lives… periods of quietness away from the light of the screen help regain equilibrium. 

Both issues need help and it would be best for our own sakes to get the help we need and not try to fix these issues ourselves. 

I lost a dear friend to depression, and I would not wish anyone to go through this. I was headed this way when my daughter hauled me out…..

At the slightest hint of fear either from burnout or depression, we need to reach out for help. 

A hideous experience…

18th August, 2022,  we had this experience at the Telephone Exchange junction on L.B. Road, Chennai. My daughter who had come for 5 days had rented a car to take us to Mahabalipuram. At this particular junction, thanks to all the happy noise the family was making, she missed the red light, and we were stopped by the police. There were 3 of them. The older one walked up to the car, saw us, and my daughter, who immediately got out of the car, apologised to him. He told her to be careful and as she turned to get into the car, a second policeman very rudely spoke to her about having jumped the light. She apologised but he kept shouting at her, told her he would cancel her license, and then asked her for her ATM card. My daughter explained she was here just for 5 days and she was sorry this had happened but the man using his raw brute force kept talking to her very rudely enjoying the spectacle of her child crying and all of us stunned by this exchange. ATM card? Crime? The older policeman then told him to let her go. He told her to get into the car but he called another policeman who was standing there, whispered something to him and asked him to go with her to the car. At the car this third policeman who was carrying a portable cash machine asked her for Rs 1200/-. She took it out to give it to him and he asked her to hold it below the machine, which she did. The money was hidden from view. He then slipped the money into his pocket surreptitiously and went away. The strange thing was that none of the policemen were wearing name tags. I get that they had to stop my daughter for having jumped the light but I absolutely fail to understand the horribly rude tone of voice and words that were used, as if she was a criminal and this was a major criminal offense. I also could not understand why her ATM card was being asked for. It was a hideous playback of the Raj days when the natives were bullied by native policemen. 

 

I decided to go on the Net to find out what the responsibilities of police should be. And in this link - https://lawtimesjournal.in/who-is-police-what-are-powers-duties-of-police/  I found these statements:

 

Every police officer shall behave with the members of the public with due courtesy and decorum, particularly so in dealing with senior citizens, women, and children.

 

 

The police should always be courteous and well mannered.

 

 

Integrity of the highest order is the fundamental basis of the prestige of the police. 

 

My family has always admired Tamil Nadu-the culture and ethos. This was a rude awakening to the grim reality of corruption and rudeness among those who are meant to protect the people. 

wish you well…

by David Baldacci is an absolute must read. It is a beautifully and sensitively crafted story. The main character, Miss Louisa Mae Cardinal is someone who has something for all of us. She has become my role model and as I begin the last lap of my journey, she is someone I would love to be like… I have often asked myself what now? How can I handle this part in the best way? What should I do? How should I be? What should I think? It’s Louisa’s approach to life… to every day… to everything that crosses her path… how she approaches the huge responsibilities that fall to her lot at this time of her life when she is in her eighties… lots to learn from this, and if I can be a quarter of the person she was, I would have really LIVED and would be able to end my life in peace…